One of the questions I was interested in answering is how the spelling has evolved (or degraded) over time.

According to Smithsonian, doughnuts first made their appearance on American shores way back in the 1600s, when the Dutch colonized the island of Manhattan and brought with them their olykoeken - literally "oily cakes."

Doughnuts? Or donuts?The word we use now - doughnuts - allegedly comes from a couple of centuries later, when the mother of an east coast ship's captain fried up some cakes to send with her son on long voyages. According to Smithsonian, the mother inserted a nut in the middle of the cake, where the dough might not cook through. And thus, the dough-nut was born.

So how did we get from there to the now seemingly ubiquitous "donut"?

Grammarist says that the shortened spelling of the word has been in use since the late 1800s, but it wasn't until pastry chain Dunkin' Donuts arrived on the scene in the latter half of the twentieth century that it really took hold.

These days, you're likely to find the "donut" spelling about one-third of the time in published American writing, according to Grammarist.